Later too, Livia said to me, 'You claim to love your sister. She is perhaps the only woman of whom I could feel jealous. And yet you subjected her to this marriage. Why?' 'Not for myself,' I replied. 'For Rome. For the whole world.'
When Antony met me to sign what came to be called the Treaty of Brindisi, he laughed. He stretched forward his hand to pinch my cheek in the old manner, hesitated a moment, and then nipped quite hard. 'Marry your sister, kid,' he crowed. 'Well, that is coming full circle.'
I drew back. I said, 'There is one other thing. This marriage is expedient, but I love my sister.'
'She's a beauty,' he said, 'and they tell me, Caesar, as virtuous as she is beautiful, unlike some I could mention, eh, and wise enough to be Caesar's sister too. So what's this other thing?' 'Cleopatra,' I said. 'Oh, the Queen? What of her?' 'Rumour has it that you and she are lovers.'
'One up to rumour,' Antony said. 'But she's an awful woman all the same. Sees herself as she-who-must-be- obeyed. I'll be very glad to have a good Roman wife to protect me against the Queen. But you must realize our relationship's primarily political. I need Egypt.' 'Rome needs Egypt,' I said. 'Does Rome need Cleopatra…?' Antony beamed.
'You're a deep one, Caesar,' he said. 'The same thought had occurred to me.' That conversation cleared my conscience, or could have done, if my conscience allowed itself to be deceived by words. But I knew I was doing wrong, and yet it was what had to be done.
I explained this to Octavia herself. I told her that Antony and I must hold together and that this was only possible if she agreed to act as the bond.
Octavia said, 'He must promise he will not see the Queen of Egypt alone.'
Antony gave that promise. There are those who talk of Antony and Cleopatra as great lovers. I have noticed this tendency among some of your mother's aristocratic friends. They should know that he gave that promise. There was no deep love between them, believe me.
Octavia also said, 'Caesar married his daughter to Pompey to cement their alliance, and it lasted while she lived. I know what duty demands of me, brother.'
Octavia has a pale face, a priestess's face, and it was very still and lovely, like a priestess before the altar, as she said this. She said one other thing: 'After all, I have known love with Marcellus. That is more than many women can say. But I have one request, brother. I do not wish my son, the young Marcellus, to grow to manhood in Antony's household. I do not wish to surrender him, but I shall leave him with my mother and ask you to make yourself responsible for his virtue, well-being and education.' I said, 'I shall love him as a son or younger brother.'
So the marriage went ahead, though my mother was indeed furious and never ceased to reproach me for having, as she put it, 'sacrificed' my sister. She was right, but the sacrifice was necessary. The Treaty of Brindisi confirmed me in possession of Gaul; it left me a free hand to deal with Sextus Pompey, whom Antony abandoned with a readiness that should have chilled the blood of any of his friends (and which I did not fail to remark myself). In return Antony now took control of the whole Empire of Rome from the Ionian Sea to the Euphrates; I promised him five legions from Gaul for the Parthian War on which his mind was fixed.
'Well, this all seems satisfactory. Have we forgotten anything?' 'I don't think so.' Maecenas tapped me on the shoulder and leaned forward. 'Lepidus,' he said. 'Oh Lepidus,' I said.
'By Jupiter, yes,'Antony said, 'our noble colleague, our fellow triumvir. How could we come to forget him? What about the noble donkey?' 'Let him keep Africa,' I said.
'Why not?' Antony said, and the conference ended on a fit of giggles.
There are in Germany dark and trackless forests. Huge trees join their branches to deny the sun to the ground below. The undergrowth is thick, tangled and full of briars which lacerate the traveller's legs, and even reach above the protective leggings of ox-hide such as Ulysses wore when he drove his plough in Ithaca. These forests are numinous, spirit-haunted by the demons of delusion. In the absence of paths, the traveller must trace his journey by notching the trees with his knife. The forests afflict the nerves; no Roman who spends any time there comes out unimpaired, but rather prey to nervous disorders, stomach troubles, strange shudderings. He sighs for the lucidity of the Mediterranean world, for the stark truthful landscape of rock and sky and water; he longs for the certainties of these harsh realities.
For five years after Caesar's murder I lived in a world like that German forest. Though in retrospect I can discern a pattern, at the time I moved from restless day through sleepless and wary night. I had a sense of my general direction, but I moved without precise knowledge, apprehensive, circumspect and often fearful.
Livia brought me into the sunshine, as if I emerged from the forest to find a fruitful plain spread below me. I fell in love with her at first sight; yet for three weeks she refused to see me. She regarded me as an enemy; I was the young disturber of the social order, the champion of those without property and family – her lovely head was full of the stuffiest aristocratic notions, and her gull-witted husband resentfully encouraged them. I sent her letters, flowers, gifts of fruit and shellfish – to no avail -though I had at least the sense not to send her my verses. Then I invited the pair of them to a dinner-party, and sent Maecenas to warn the egregious Tiberius Nero that the invitation was in reality a command. She arrived in a white gown with no jewellery, and her face expressed disdain. I set myself to be charming and failed to charm. Of course I had next to no experience with young girls of good birth, and clearly neither of my marriages had prepared me. I tried to talk nonsense, not realizing that Livia had no taste for it; later she told me she had thought me a disappointing buffoon.
Conversation was sticky; no doubt about that. I knew Maecenas was laughing at me, and should have realized that his was just the sort of presence to revolt Livia. What, I wondered, itching with impatience and almost stammering with nervousness, would the girl like to talk about? War and politics were out; we would only disagree. I tried poetry; she said she never read it. I asked her about her family:
'I loved my father,' she said, 'he was an honourable man. He was killed at Philippi. I have been told he was killed after the battle.'
Her chin tilted upwards and she looked me full in the eyes with no flicker of understanding, but only challenge.
I said to myself: she is going to despise me if I knuckle under and don't meet her defiance. I leaned across the table and poured wine into her cup.
'It was an ugly business, Philippi,' I said, 'and it followed on an uglier – the murder of my father. But I am sorry to hear of your father, believe me. There can never be anything but pain and grief in shedding the blood of a fellow-citizen.' 'That is easy to say, Caesar.' 'And difficult to prove?' 'Impossible, I should say.' Her eyes held mine.
'You are right,' I said. 'It is impossible. I can only ask you to believe me, and to remember this: had Philippi gone differently I would be in my grave myself, and I do not think it would be honoured. War between Romans is foul, wicked and wrong. If I have one aim in life, it is to bring an end to these civil wars, which have disfigured and deformed the Republic since the days of Sulla and Marius. But to bring them to an end it is not sufficient to conquer; the social causes of civil strife must be treated, for the body politic is diseased. The true mission of any Roman of conscience today is that of healer, but to cure disease requires first the surgeon's knife…'
A smile, like the first shaft of dawn sunlight striking a cold wall, touched the corner of her mouth.
'I am glad you are no longer talking to me as if I were just a pretty girl,' she said. 'I am glad you can be serious with me, Caesar.'
She rose from her couch, and, either catching her foot in the hem of her gown or slipping on the marble, tumbled abruptly to the floor. I was at her side in a moment. 'My ankle,' she said. I glanced down the table. Tiberius Nero was blearily deep in the wine-flask, paying no heed to his wife. I picked her up. 'We'll have it seen to,' I said. 'Ouch,' she said, 'you're stronger than you look, though.'
'It's very difficult,' I said, laying her on a couch in the antechamber and feeling the ankle, which was already swelling, 'to forget that you are a lovely girl.' 'Why do you wear that disgusting beard?' she murmured. 'To please you, I'll remove it.'
The ankle was badly sprained. I ordered the surgeon to instruct that she should be moved as little as possible, and so invited her and Tiberius Nero to be my guests. And that was how it began.
'Tell me about yourself?' 'What do you want to know?' 'Everything.' 'You can't know everything.' 'But I must'
